


Kindness

by kaliawai512



Series: It's Raining [5]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Death, Found Family, Gen, Torture, and hurt, but it's bad, it's not super super graphic, mostly this story is pain, seriously if you are squeamish don't read this, so much hurt, very briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-05 08:37:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14614257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaliawai512/pseuds/kaliawai512
Summary: Charlie loves Toriel, and he loves the home she's given him, but he can't stay here. He has a family to get back to. A family who misses him, and a family he can never forget.Toriel says the rest of the underground is dangerous, but it can't really be that bad. Can it?The story of the kind, green human soul, before he became a folder of test results tucked away in a file cabinet. Prequel toIt's Raining Right Here.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> In case you didn't notice the tags ... proceed with caution. This chapter is fairly benign, but the next chapter contains highly disturbing content.

Charlie was sure, from the day he arrived, that he was not the first child Toriel had cared for.

The first hint, of course, was how … practiced she had seemed when she found him in the flowerbed, rubbing his sore side where he had hit the ground. Like she had done this before. Like it was almost a script, one she had gone over again and again until she had memorized it without even realizing it.

That wasn’t to say it didn’t sound genuine. He was sure it was. Toriel cared, more than almost anyone else he had ever met. But he knew he wasn’t the first child she had cared about.

The other hints came when he arrived at her house, and found a bedroom already set up, complete with a twin-sized bed, decorations suitable for a kid’s room, and even a box of toys. He didn’t know many adults who kept bedrooms like this around if they didn’t have any kids.

The final hint was, well … when she told him.

He stayed with her for a week without questioning anything. He wanted to go home, of course, but he could tell she was worried about him and seemed a little too desperate to keep him safe, and besides, it was nice with her. He didn’t mind staying for a little while.

But it wasn’t his home. And after a week, he told her so, as gently as he could, and asked how he could get back where he had come from.

Watching her face fall made him feel guiltier than he had felt in a long, long time.

In struck him, in hindsight, that he really should have thought of it sooner. If he wasn’t the first child she had cared for, then there must have been a reason why none of those kids were there anymore. He had thought, at first, that maybe they had found their way home, like _he_ wanted to find his way home. But the sadness that gleamed in her eyes wasn’t the sadness of a mother who had watched her surrogate children leave to go to another life. It wasn’t the sadness of a mother who simply _missed_ her children.

It was the face of a mother who had _lost_ her children.

It was the same face his great-uncle wore when he talked about his son, who had been found dead on the side of the road a few days after he went missing. That had been decades ago, before Charlie was even born. But the pain in his eyes had never faded.

Charlie wanted to ask the question right away, the second it popped into his head, the second his grief had faded and his thoughts started up again. But he waited another week, and a week after that, until things had gotten back into a regular routine, and Toriel no longer looked so sad.

Then, one day over breakfast, he decided that there was no point waiting any longer.

“Am I just a replacement?”

Toriel almost dropped the plate of waffles in her hands. She stared at him, frozen, before carefully sliding the plate down on the table and taking her seat across from him.

“My child … why would you think that?”

Charlie ducked his head. He shrugged.

“You’ve had a lot of kids stay here before,” he murmured, quietly, but loud enough for her to hear. He peeked up at her over the black curls falling over his face. “Am I just …”

Toriel’s eyes widened, and Charlie stared at his hands in his lap.

Silence. Almost a minute, nothing but silence.

Then Toriel sighed.

“Look at me. Please.”

Charlie fidgeted, but looked up. Toriel stared back at him with eyes softer than he had seen yet, and she reached across the table to take one of his hands in her own. Her hands were several times the size of his, covering them entirely. They felt warm and safe.

She sighed and gave his hand a squeeze.

“I have … known many children before,” she began, barely able to meet his eyes for more than a few seconds. “Many have come and … many have left. But I have never known you. You are Charlie. You are unique. And I love you for all those things that make you exactly who you are.”

Charlie swallowed the lump in his throat and forced his head up a little more. “You love me?”

This time, she smiled without any effort at all.

“Yes. Very much.”

Charlie pressed his lips together, but didn’t try to hold back the smile stretching up his lips. He lifted his other hand and laid it on top of hers.

“I love you, too.”

And only as she smiled back, wider still, did he realize how true it was.

He missed his parents. He missed his little sisters. He missed his family and his friends and his town and school and the sun.

But he loved Toriel.

And if there was no way for him to go back home, if there was no way for him to see all those people he loved again … then maybe he could be happy here.

Maybe.

*

“Maybe” lasted a lot longer than he had originally thought. Or a lot shorter, depending on how he looked at it.

He had tried to think of living down here “forever,” but “forever” was a very big concept to grasp. In his mind, a single school year was “forever,” and if that was how he viewed this, he had, indeed, lasted forever. Forever two times over, actually.

He settled in, just as he had promised himself he would try to do. He got used to sleeping in the new bed, playing with new toys, spending his time talking with Toriel or reading or playing around the Ruins. After Toriel realized that he had a passion for cooking, she spent hours teaching him how to make her favorite recipes, and hours more learning from the recipes he had grown up with.

It was … weird, not having a computer or a tablet or even his mom’s phone to play on. The only piece of technology Toriel owned was an old cell phone she had given him for emergencies, which he was pretty sure his grandmother would have thought looked ancient. He tried to think of it like camping. In a house. For a very long time.

Even though most of the camping spots he had been to still had Wifi.

In any case, Toriel made sure he was never bored—or at least she did her best, even if the “activities” she suggested weren’t actually that interesting. She did her best to make him as happy as she could. She did her best to make sure he enjoyed every day here. And he did. He really did.

But he never stopped missing the people he loved.

He never stopped wanting to go home.

He made it through the first six months without too much trouble, then the six months after that, with only a little more difficulty. But after the first year, every month dropped him further downhill, until he spent most of his time drawing pictures of the people he missed.

It was just after the eighteen-month anniversary of his arrival that he realized he was starting to forget what his mom looked like.

He had drawn dozens of pictures of her. He thought about her every day. But … the pictures had started to meld with his mind’s image of her, until he couldn’t remember exactly how long her hair had been, or the exact shape of her eyes. He couldn’t decide between two shades of brown to match her skin tone. He couldn’t remember what color eyeshadow she wore. He couldn’t remember how often she liked to wear her hair up, instead of letting it fall over her shoulders, thick and curly, like it looked when she let it air-dry.

He couldn’t remember felt she smelled like. What it felt like to hug her. How her voice sounded when she told him a story before bed.

He couldn’t remember his little sisters. He couldn’t remember Jessica’s laugh, or Penelope’s drawings of the stars, or the way Lettie liked to knock her food off the table as soon as it was set down in front of her. He couldn’t remember how it felt when his dad lifted him on his shoulders and carried him around the house.

And the second it hit him, he knew that “maybe” had gone on way too long.

But he still waited until the next day, at breakfast, to tell Toriel.

She tried to brush him off at first. She convinced him to wait another week before he made a decision, and after that, another week still. But he had been waiting for far too long anyway, and when she tried to convince him to wait a third week, he just shook his head.

He was almost surprised by how quickly she agreed once she saw the look in his eyes.

She didn’t agree with his decision, of course. He knew she never would. But he also knew that if she really wanted to, she could have stopped him. She was strong, far stronger than she let on. She was bigger than him, and even though she had told him that humans were much stronger than monsters, he knew that she was formidable, and she likely could have kept him locked up here if she decided to do so.

But she didn’t.

He knew she would never do that to him.

He wanted to thank her for it, but he felt like that would only make it worse.

She helped him pack a bag of all his favorite foods, most of which they had cooked together. She gave him a change of clothes, and a map of the underground, a description of where he would have to go to find the barrier.

She told him what he would have to do to break it.

He was pretty sure she thought that would stop him. He told her he would find another way. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He would never hurt anyone. But he would find a way.

She hung her head for a long time, then placed her hands on his shoulders and stared into his eyes.

“Charlie, please,” she burned, her voice so tired and so old and so _scared_ that it made him feel old and scared, too. “I’m begging you, don’t go out there, I can’t lose you.”

Charlie swallowed the tears in the back of his throat and put his hands on her arms.

“You won’t lose me,” he said, even though he knew she wouldn’t believe it. He held himself a little taller and shook his head, trying to smile. “I’ll be okay. I’ll find a way out, and … and when I do, I can tell the other humans you’re here! And we can find a way to get all the monsters out! You can come live on the surface with me! And you can meet my mom and my dad and my little sisters, they’re the _best_ , and … I can show you all this great stuff, you’ll love it, but I …”

He trailed off and hung his head, then peeked up at her through his hanging hair.

“I can’t stay.”

She looked back at him, silent, pained. Then, without a word, she nodded and pulled him into her arms for the tightest hug he had felt in his life. He thought his ribs might crack, but he never wanted it to end.

She led him to the door and opened it without looking at him. She ran a hand over his hair and kissed the top of his head. Then she stepped aside and watched as he stepped out into the snow beyond.

He made himself wait a minute before he turned around to look at her, and by then, the door was already shut.

*

One of the first things Charlie learned in the outside world was that a lot of monsters didn’t know what a human looked like.

They had a general idea—some of them had apparently seen humans who had passed through here before—but as long as he stayed covered up in as much fluffy clothing as possible, they didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t just a strange monster they had never seen before.

He had expected vicious, bloodthirsty creatures from how Toriel had described them, but … they were just people. People who looked different from him, sure, but lots of people looked different from him. That didn’t mean they weren’t people.

They weren’t that different from humans, aside from their appearances. They ate and slept and walked around and had jobs and families and stuff they did for fun. If he was nice to them, they were nice back. The innkeeper let him sleep in one of her beds in exchange for helping her out during the day, and even let him eat meals with her family.

Occasionally her young daughter asked why he didn’t have any fur or scales, or why he had one big patch of hair only on his head, but she was content being told he was “unique.”

He tried to ask questions when it didn’t seem too suspicious, and he spent a lot of his free time at the library, reading books on monster culture and history, all the things Toriel hadn’t liked talking about but he knew he needed to know if he was going to make it through the underground. He laughed at all the inaccurate facts about humans, and tried not to be too disappointed in his own species when he heard about things they had done he was pretty sure were true.

He had known humans had done bad things in the past. He knew that it didn’t mean humans were always bad, or that they couldn’t be very good. It didn’t make it any easier to accept.

But it did make him a little happier that no one had recognized him as a human, and for a completely different reason than the one he would have expected.

So far, everyone liked him. And he didn’t want that to change.

He didn’t stay in Snowdin for more than two weeks. He liked it, and if he had been looking for another home, it would have been a good one. But if he had been looking for another home, he would have stayed with Toriel. He didn’t want another home. He wanted _his_ home. And staying here wasn’t going to get him there. So he moved on.

He barely spent a day in Waterfall. It was nice, without a doubt. Better than being freezing all the time, especially since he had always preferred warmer temperatures. The people were nice, but after spending what he considered too long in Snowdin, he was ready to move on.

Of course, he might not have been quite so eager if he had realized that Hotland really lived up to its name.

It was also larger, more … industrial? And it didn’t have the same small-town feel that Snowdin had, the sense that you could go up to any building or house and ask for help and you would get it. The monsters were still friendly, but they were busier. Hotland was also more crowded, and it was all Charlie could do to keep himself from dying of thirst as he slept on benches and searched for a place to stay.

It had taken two hours for someone to invite him inside to eat in Snowdin. In Hotland, it took four days.

But it _did_ happen, and Charlie tried to be grateful for that.

He wasn’t totally starving when the man noticed him sitting on a bench around mid-day and offered to share his lunch, but the gold he had collected could only go so far, and he scarfed down the meal faster than was strictly polite. But the man looked more amused than annoyed, so Charlie didn’t slow down.

It was a weekend—apparently, Charlie hadn’t been keeping track—so the man, who still hadn’t introduced himself, offered to let him stay there for the afternoon as an escape from the heat. Charlie thanked him at least five times in a row, but the man just waved it off as if it was no big deal.

Given that, maybe Charlie shouldn’t have been so surprised when, a few hours later, the man offered to let him stay there as long as he needed to find a permanent home.

Charlie hadn’t said anything about being homeless. But while Hotland was a lot bigger than Snowdin, it still wasn’t _huge,_ and for all Charlie knew, news about the weird kid who slept on benches had spread all around the area by now.

He didn’t ask. He just thanked him ten more times.

The man chuckled, but waved him off yet again.

He didn’t ask for any sort of payment, and Charlie knew that he couldn’t offer any. Not gold, anyway. He had a little left saved up, but not enough to count for rent, and not for more than a couple of days, even if he got a ridiculously cheap rate. For about ten minutes after he had accepted the offer, he sat at the table, fidgeting. The man apparently worked out of the house, so Charlie couldn’t help with that. He would help pick up, certainly, but that didn’t seem like enough to repay him.

Finally, the man pushed himself out of his own chair and told him he was going to town to run a few errands. Charlie nodded.

Then, just as the man reached the doorway, Charlie shot up out of his chair.

“I can cook,” he said, almost without thinking about it. The man turned to face him. Charlie shifted. “I mean … I can make dinner. As thanks. For letting me stay here.”

The monster furrowed his brow a moment, apparently thinking, before he chuckled.

“Sure, kid.”

From the look on his face, Charlie guessed he was expecting a frozen dinner heated up without destroying the kitchen, or maybe macaroni and cheese out of the box. It wasn’t quite condescending, but it reminded Charlie a bit of one of his babysitters, who quite literally patted him on the head when he told her that he always made dinner on Wednesdays and she didn’t need to order pizza.

He had only been thinking of a simple dish when he offered, maybe something he had picked up from Toriel. But the second the man turned around, motioning over his shoulder toward the pantry and the fridge, Charlie was already snatching up a wooden spoon and rummaging through the cupboards for a good-sized saucepan.

* 

It took less than a week for the monster—Nuli, Charlie had found out that evening—to offer Charlie a semi-permanent home with him if he made food to sell to the neighbors. Within a week after that, Nuli was suggesting, only half-jokingly, that the two of them should open up a restaurant.

It was just about the best arrangement Charlie could have imagined—better than anything he would have dared wish for. He spent his entire day doing what he loved. Everyone loved what he created. He met new, interesting people, and he made them happy with the things he made.

It wasn’t home, and it didn’t replace the people he missed, the people he still so desperately wanted to get back to. But it was nice.

And it was closer to home than any place he had found since he left the Ruins.

He could gather information out here, information he might be able to use to cross the barrier safely, without hurting anyone. Information Toriel wouldn’t have given him, because she didn’t want to risk him leaving. Didn’t want to risk him getting hurt.

He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t mad. He knew she was genuinely trying to protect him.

He knew she loved him. Just as much as he loved her.

But he couldn’t stay in the Ruins forever. And as nice as this new home was, he couldn’t stay here forever either.

He didn’t know the date when he arrived, but it felt like two months, maybe three, since he had arrived. He didn’t have a calendar handy, but he knew he was approaching the two-year mark of his time in the underground. Two years away from his family. Two years without seeing the sun. It didn’t feel like two years. Sometimes it felt like a week, and sometimes it felt like a lifetime.

His mom’s face was so blurry in his head now that he had almost forgotten her smile.

Sometimes he considered asking Nuli for help getting home. But as far as he knew, Nuli didn’t even know that he was a human. If he knew … if he knew that Charlie was supposed to be captured, killed, used to break the barrier … would he still help him? Would he even refrain from taking him to the king himself?

But if Charlie wanted to get to the barrier, he would _have_ to face the king, wouldn’t he?

And if he faced the king … the king would try to kill him.

Right?

Toriel had seemed to think so. She seemed to think the king was vicious, merciless, that he would strike a human child down without thought. But Charlie had only heard good things about the king since he arrived here. The king coming out to visit individuals, helping to solve problems, friendly and humble and casual. Apparently he even left his house open for people to visit and talk if they needed.

How could someone like that be a killer?

Maybe this was a different king that the one Toriel had mentioned. She had mentioned his name, but it was a name Charlie had never heard before, and he couldn’t remember it, and anyway, he didn’t know _this_ king’s name. Toriel had been in the Ruins a long, long time, she had said so herself. Maybe the old king had died or retired and a new, nicer king had taken over. It wouldn’t make sense for a nice king to kill kids. So this had to be a different king.

Charlie told himself that, and he told himself he had nothing to fear, but his heart still started pounding whenever he thought of making the last stretch of his journey. Every time he thought of actually _going_ there, he felt his arms begin to shake and his whole body get cold.

So he put it off. A little more time wouldn’t make much difference, after all. Not when he had been gone so long already. He wanted to see his family, he knew they must be worried out of their minds, they probably thought he was dead, but … a little more time wasn’t too much to ask of them, was it?

Just a little more time. Then he would go. He would say goodbye to Nuli, go to the Capital, and … talk to the king.

If he was as nice as everyone said he was, if he was willing to listen to his subjects so much, then Charlie had no doubt that everything would be fine. They would talk, they would figure out a way for Charlie to leave safely, and then Charlie would come back with his family and help set the rest of the monsters free.

Yeah. Everything would be fine.

He would make sure of it.

*

Charlie tried not to leave the house too often. He knew it was risky, even though most of the monsters around here knew him, even if he was well-liked, popular, even. He knew that he had just gotten lucky with the fact that very few people here knew what a human looked like—or, if they did, they didn’t care enough to call him out on it. He was just a strange-looking monster, and after all, if he lived with Nuli, making delicious food for everyone to eat, he couldn’t be that bad, could he?

Still. He preferred to play it safe. And the less time he was out and about, far away from the house, the safer he was.

But sometimes he had to leave. Usually when Nuli had to work late and asked that he pick up groceries or run some other errand. Charlie didn’t mind doing favors, and Nuli didn’t ask him very often. Charlie wasn’t worried about being kicked out at this point. Nuli liked him, and Charlie got the feeling that even if something happened that stopped him from being able to cook or help around the house, Nuli would still let him sleep on his couch.

No. Charlie liked Nuli, and he wanted to make his life as easy as possible. He wanted to show how grateful he was for the chance he had been given.

And he wanted to make sure that when he had to leave for good, he was leaving Nuli a little happier than he had found him.

Most of the time, Charlie shopped in Hotland—there were plenty of stores there and most of the owners knew him. But sometimes Nuli needed something only available in Waterfall, and Charlie gladly agreed to make the trip. Nothing in the underground was very far, and it was nice to be somewhere wet and cool when he spent so much time in dry heat. It was nice to see the greenery instead of metal and stone. And it was even nicer to see the Echo Flowers, to crouch in front of them and talk and try to figure out how they worked, and think about how he could bring one home for his little sisters.

Charlie liked Waterfall, and he had no reason to fear it. He took his time picking out the things Nuli had requested and took even more time with the Echo Flowers, and when he finally started back, he took his time with that, too, savoring the coolness and knowing it wouldn’t last. He walked through Waterfall with almost as much confidence as he walked through Hotland, letting his attention drift to his surroundings, taking in the unique beauty this place had to offer. But he was still careful. He still remained alert. He knew that he had been lucky up until now, and getting too comfortable was just asking for trouble.

Which was probably why he was so quick to notice the sound of footsteps ahead of him.

There was a monster approaching on his left, walking on the other side of the path. He glanced to the side long enough to flash them a smile before he looked ahead again. The path they were on was narrow, but now so narrow that there wasn’t a bit of space between them. It took only a few seconds for him to realize that the monster had stopped, to feel the weight of eyes locked on him. Charlie hesitated, took a breath, then paused in his own steps and looked up to face the monster, now only a few steps away.

Charlie had met hundreds of monsters during his time here, but still, his body stiffened.

It was … a skeleton.

Or at least they looked like a skeleton. They had no hair or scales, and they were pure white, like bone, with tiny little lights glowing in their empty sockets.

And they were staring at him. Eyes wide, lips—well, teeth—parted, the rest of their body stiff with something between surprise and fear.

Charlie forced a smile through his shock. He had never seen a skeleton before, but … there were plenty of monsters he had never seen before. And in his experience so far, the monsters who looked the most frightening—by human standards, at least—were often the most kind.

He opened his mouth, lifting a hand from his side, ready to introduce himself, just like he had for everyone else he had met.

He barely noticed the skeleton lifting their hand as well, much faster.

All he made out was a flash of white, coming from all directions, before something smashed into his head.

He was out before he hit the ground.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for semi-graphic torture and child death.

Someone was talking.

It wasn’t English. Or … at least it didn’t sound like English. Not any type of English he had heard. Funny. All the monsters he had met so far spoke English, though a few of them didn’t have mouths and used other ways to communicate. Maybe this was one of those monsters.

Charlie didn’t have time to think about it any further before the pain rushed into his head, and he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut against the bright light all around him. When had he fallen asleep? Or …

That skeleton.

He had tried to shake his hand, and …

Had he attacked him? Was that what he had felt hitting his head? He knew a lot of monsters used projectiles, and he had never seen a skeleton before. He didn’t know how they attacked. He didn’t know much about monster attacks in the first place. The last time a monster had attacked him had been in the Ruins, and those monsters were just scared. He was new and unfamiliar and they didn’t know what to make of him, so they lashed out. Once they got used to him, once they knew he wasn’t going to hurt them, they backed off.

Apparently this monster didn’t know that yet.

Or else they …

Charlie forced his eyes open again, fighting past the pain to make out the blurry shapes in front of him. It was a ceiling. A white ceiling with bright lights shining down on him. He glanced to either side of him, as far as his peripheral vision would go. There were … tables. Desks. Chairs. Test tubes. Like the chemistry lab at the high school he had visited once with his mom. Was this a lab? Why was he in a lab?

He gritted his teeth and tried to turn onto his side.

But his arms wouldn’t move.

He stiffened. He pulled again, and still, his arms stayed in place. He could feel it now, some kind of straps, holding them down to the hard metal … thing he was laying on. They weren’t tight enough to hurt him if he wasn’t moving, but he couldn’t shift more than an inch without them holding him back.

He moved his legs, and even through his pants, he could feel the straps holding down his ankles, giving him just enough room to wiggle.

Not enough to escape.

His heart skipped a beat, and for a second, he thought he might throw up. No. No, everything was fine. He was _fine._ Maybe … maybe that skeleton had thought he was going to hurt them. Maybe they had restrained him to make sure he didn’t.

He could explain. He had been able to get out of all kinds of weird situations over the past few months. He could get out of this. He would be okay.

_“Every human who has left here has died.”_

His breath caught before he forced it in and out again.

She couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t like she could go to the surface and check, was it? If she hadn’t come out of the Ruins, she couldn’t know for sure what had happened to them. Maybe they had been fine. Maybe they had just gotten out and not been able to contact her.

Monsters were nice. He had gotten to know dozens of them, they wouldn’t …

The other humans were just _kids,_ they wouldn’t …

A sound echoed from across the room, and Charlie froze.

There was someone in here.

He paused, just trying to breathe, before he tried again to tilt his head and look around the room. He was strapped down firmly, but his neck was free, and if he strained hard, he could just make out a tall, pale shape standing maybe ten feet away.

The skeleton.

At least … Charlie thought it was the same skeleton. It _looked_ like the same skeleton. But … in a lab coat, rather than a sweater.

They were turned away, apparently writing something down. Charlie shifted under his restraints and swallowed twice before clearing his throat.

“Um … hello?”

The skeleton spun around so fast it looked like they might trip. They stared at him, sockets even wider than before, mouth slightly open. They blinked. Charlie blinked back, swallowing.

“Hello,” he repeated. “I’m … I’m Charlie. Can you … please let me out of these? I’m … I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk.”

The skeleton didn’t say anything, not even those gibberish words he had heard before. They just stared at Charlie, eyes wide, mouth slowly closing to a thin line. Charlie swallowed past the lump in his throat.

“Can you … understand me?”

They flinched. That was as good as a yes in Charlie’s book. He gave them a small smile.

“I guess you … know I’m a human?” he asked, despite every instinct he had built up to not tell, to _never_ tell. He was smart enough to know when a secret couldn’t be kept.

The skeleton stiffened and looked away.

For a minute, neither of them spoke or moved. Charlie stared at the ceiling and tried as hard as he could to get his thoughts in order, to figure out what he was going to do from here. The skeleton clearly didn’t trust him. Maybe that was why they had strapped him down. If he could convince them that he didn’t mean any harm, maybe …

Charlie took a deep breath and turned his head to look at the skeleton again.

It was harder to tell someone’s gender down here, but Charlie had gotten pretty good at it. It was different than with humans, and there had been a lot of times early on that he met a monster he was sure was one gender but who turned out to be another entirely. But he learned. He didn’t know exactly _what_ he was looking for, but … he got good hunches. And this skeleton seemed like a man. Probably. He couldn’t be sure, especially with a type of monster he had never seen before.

He swallowed and tried his best to keep his smile up.

“I know … that monsters want to capture humans. To … take our souls,” he started. The skeleton’s shoulders tightened. “I know it … it’ll help you get out of here.”

He let a few seconds pass, but he didn’t get any confirmation or denial. The skeleton probably knew he didn’t need it. He kept smiling.

“I can’t blame you for that.”

The skeleton glanced up at him, just for a second, just long enough to see the faint crease in the center of his browbone. Charlie smiled wider, a hopeful warmth burning in his chest.

“I read a lot of stuff, in the books you guys have. About … the war.”

The skeleton tensed, and Charlie swore the lights in his eyes shrunk. He swallowed.

“But … humans now don’t even know about it. We … we’ve never heard of monsters. And if they had … I bet they would help you,” he went on. The skeleton still said nothing. Charlie shifted again. “I told someone … someone I met when I first came down here … I told her that’s what I would do. I would go back to the surface, tell humans that monsters are trapped down here, and we could … help you. We could get everyone out.”

Nothing. Not a word. Maybe the skeleton really couldn’t speak. He was still looking at Charlie, so Charlie kept going, trying to smile even though it was hard.

“No one else has to die. We can find another way.”

The skeleton stared at him, and Charlie forced his smile a little wider. The skeleton’s shoulders tensed more the longer Charlie looked at him, his sockets a little wider—was one bigger than the other, or was he imagining that?—and his mouth pressed into a tight line.

Then, without warning, he snapped his head to the side and walked across the room, away from Charlie.

Charlie’s smile fell.

“Please,” he said, without thinking. He fidgeted under his restraints, he knew they weren’t getting tighter but they _felt_ like it and … “Please, I just want to get out of here. I just wanna go home. I don’t wanna hurt anyone. I don’t know … I don’t know what you think you have to do, but you don’t! Please …”

The skeleton didn’t respond. He didn’t even look at Charlie. Charlie could hardly see him at this distance, at this angle, but he could hear him rummaging through something. Paper. Metal. Charlie couldn’t tell whether he was really looking for something or just stalling. Maybe he would let Charlie out. Maybe … he realized he was wrong, that Charlie wasn’t going to hurt anyone. Maybe …

Maybe … he didn’t.

Maybe he was still scared. If he was scared enough to knock Charlie out, to bring him here, then what if there was nothing Charlie could do to change his mind? What if it didn’t matter if he was scared or not? What if he was so determined to break the barrier, so determined to get out of here, that he … he …

Was this … was this how monsters killed humans? Strapped to tables in cramped labs? He thought captured humans were taken to the king. That was what he had heard.

“What are you doing?” he called out, even though he knew he wouldn’t get an answer.

The skeleton didn’t answer. Charlie couldn’t see him anymore. He could barely make out the sound of his footsteps on the hard tile floor.

His heart beat so fast it hurt, and his hands began to shake. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home, he never hurt anybody, all he did was fall down a hole in a mountain, why was this _happening_ to him?

“Please,” he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut, he wanted out, he wanted to go _home._ “Please let me go.”

Mom. Mom and Dad and Jessica and Penelope and Lettie and all his friends at school. He’d never see them again. He … he couldn’t even remember what they all looked like. And his sisters were so little, it had been two years, _two years_ since he had seen them _,_ they would have grown, he would never get to see them grow up, he was supposed to be there to protect them, to take care of them, be their big brother, and he would never …

The footsteps came back, and Charlie jerked his head from side to side, trying to get a glimpse of the skeleton. The top of his head came into view, then the rest of them, then he was standing next to the table, holding something in his hands.

“What … what are you …?”

But the skeleton didn’t look at him. He set the object down on a nearby table, picked up a pair of scissors, and began to cut off Charlie’s shirt. He pulled the fabric away, tossed it aside, and began to attach these … things to his chest. His neck. His head. Little sticky things, like tiny suction cups.

Those were … what were they called? He had seen them in the hospital, after Penelope was diagnosed with epilepsy. They put things on her head to measure her brain. And they were on other parts of her body, too. He had only been eight, and he was too focused on being scared for his sister to pay attention to the name.

Was that what the skeleton wanted to do? Measure his brain? And the rest of his body? Maybe … maybe he was a doctor. Or a scientist. This looked a little like a lab, after all. Maybe he … just wanted to learn more about humans. That would be okay, right?

But why hadn’t he just asked? Didn’t scientists have to ask people before they studied them? Things were different down here, sure, but …

The skeleton stepped into view, and Charlie turned his head to see him better. The skeleton wouldn’t meet his eyes. His face was blank, his mouth a thin line, as he leaned over Charlie toward the strap on his right arm.

“Are you going to let me out?” Charlie asked, a smile touching his lips before he could stop it. “You don’t need those, really, I won’t hurt you. If you … if you want to know more about humans, I can tell you. And you can … measure my heartbeat, and my brain, and, uh .. whatever else you want.”

The skeleton paused, hands still touching the strap. Charlie searched his face, watched his expression soften for a second, watched something in his eyes burn with an emotion Charlie didn’t have a name for.

Then it was gone.

And the strap tightened around Charlie’s arm before he had the chance to protest.

His mouth had just opened to ask what the skeleton was doing when the other strap tightened, and then the other two around his legs. His breath came faster, and he searched for something, _anything,_ to say. No. No, he wasn’t … it would be fine. It was just tests. Maybe the skeleton was still worried he was going to hurt him. He just had to be patient. He just had to keep convincing the skeleton that he was safe, that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, that he—

The skeleton turned around to face a small table, and when he turned back, he was holding a knife.

Charlie lay perfectly still, staring at the shining metal blade.

Then he began to thrash.

He couldn’t think anymore. He couldn’t talk, he couldn’t get anything out, all he could see was the knife and the skeleton wasn’t looking at him but he was coming closer no get away get away please get away stop it stop it _stop it_ he had to get out get away from this Toriel help Nuli help help stop this stop this _stop it_!

The blade touched the skin just above his stomach, and Charlie thrashed harder.

The metal sliced in, burning, like getting a paper cut but it didn’t stop he could feel it breaking his skin he could feel it getting deeper he tried to kick but his legs wouldn’t move he couldn’t move and it _hurt_ it wasn’t stopping no one was coming, he was blabbering and crying and shouting but it _wasn’t stopping_ please someone help get me out of here it hurts it hurts it—

The skeleton didn’t stop. He didn’t pause. He didn’t meet Charlie’s eyes. He sliced into him like he would cut into a piece of meat. Then the knife left and Charlie panted and whimpered his face streaked with tears and he barely had time to breathe before he felt something beginning to stretch the sliced skin.

Pulling it apart.

Trying to look inside.

Charlie passed out to the sound of his own screams.

* 

It didn’t stop.

It didn’t slow down. It didn’t ease up.

The skeleton stitched him up after he was done poking around inside him, and he left, but the next day, he came back. And it continued. He disappeared over the night, but he was always back in the morning. He didn’t seem to sleep much. Charlie usually passed out before he left, waking up in fits throughout the night, and when he opened his eyes again, the lights were back on, and the skeleton was already preparing for the next test.

He never looked at Charlie. Never looked at his _face,_ anyway. And Charlie saw no more signs of hesitation.

Or maybe he just stopped looking for them.

Because every day, within minutes of opening his eyes, he was far too focused on the pain.

He tried not to scream at first. He tried to talk through it, to beg for him to stop, to say that he didn’t have to do this, he could convince him, he _had_ to convince him. He talked through the bones smacking into his body and the skeleton watching to see how fast he healed. He talked through the knives slicing into his skin, measuring how much blood left his body with each cut. He talked through the skeleton attaching new cables to his body, thick cables, hooked up to a machine Charlie hadn’t seen before.

Then the machine activated, and the Charlie couldn’t talk for the shock, like touching a thousand staticky balloons at once, racing through his body.

Harder.

And harder.

And harder still.

Until he was screaming at the top of his lungs and he swore that he was going to die.

He passed out, but he woke up again to the skeleton taking notes, bandages wrapped around the spots where the cables had been attached.

He couldn’t have been awake for more than five minutes before the skeleton was cutting into him again.

He found himself passing out near the beginning of the experiments after that, sometimes waking up just long enough to feel the excruciating pain and pass out again. He dreamt of more experiments, until he found himself unable to tell which experiments were dreamed and which ones were real. He whimpered and cried and screamed, but no longer tried to talk. It wouldn’t do any good. And his throat hurt too much from screaming for him to manage it anyway.

So he just laid there, as the days blended into one another, as the pain came and went and the constant ache turned to numbness.

The skeleton never hurt him badly enough to kill him. He was careful. Every time Charlie thought he was finally going to die, he would feel a warm light soothing some of his aches, like Toriel when she had healed his cuts and scrapes, only for the pain to overtake him again a while later. The skeleton fed him, and when Charlie tried to refuse, the skeleton forced the food down his throat.

Charlie wasn’t going to die.

He was going to be here until the skeleton got tired of him. Until he ran out of experiments. Maybe he would never get tired. Maybe Charlie would be here until he died of old age.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wanted to cry. He wanted to beg for someone to help him. But nobody else was here. Nobody would come. No one wanted to help him. Nobody cared.

And as badly as his eyes burned, the tears never came.

He woke up. He hurt. He passed out. He woke up. He hurt. He passed out.

Over and over again.

Until it stopped.

“Gaster! What are you _doing_?!”

Charlie kept screaming for several seconds before his brain recognized that the pain was gone, and he sucked in air like he was drowning, letting his body go limp against the metal table, his breath choked like sobs, his throat aching from his abused voice.

Across the room, a door fell shut. Had one opened? Charlie squeezed his hands into fists, gritted his teeth against the lingering pain, and forced his eyes open even as they ached to remain shut.

Everything was fuzzy at first. With tears or just from having his eyes closed for so long, Charlie couldn’t tell. He searched for any sign of movement, turning his head in the direction he had thought he heard the voice coming from. His head hurt. Everything hurt. He wanted to sleep and never wake up, he just wanted this to _end,_ he didn’t care if he never went home and never saw anyone he loved again, he just wanted it all to be _over._

Then his vision began to clear.

And he saw them.

The … bird.

No. The bird _monster._ With a bill and feathers and sharp, angry eyes.

Staring at the skeleton.

Charlie’s head lolled to the other side, searching out the skeleton’s thin, tall form, still standing just next to the table. It took a second to focus on him, and even longer to see his hands lifting from his sides. Charlie’s brow furrowed. He was … signing. Not very well, the movement a little sloppy, but that was definitely a sign. Charlie wracked his brain, come on, come on, he had _learned_ sign language, one of Nuli’s neighbors had been nonverbal, he hadn’t been _fluent,_ but he had picked up a few signs.

HUMAN.

Was that it? He thought that was it. He forced his head the other way, ignoring the ache, focusing on the bird monster again.

“Yes, I can see it’s a human,” she said, confirming Charlie’s suspicion. She looked at Charlie, furrowed what counted for her brow, taking a few steps further into the room. “So why haven’t you delivered it to the king?”

The skeleton didn’t respond. He brought his hands close to his chest, like … like a nervous kid, his teeth pressed together, his whole body tense. The bird monster stepped closer still, until she stood only a few yards away from him. Only then did the skeleton lift his hands again, forming the next sign a bit more clearly than before.

FIVE.

She frowned. She looked at Charlie, pausing for a second, frozen, as if she hadn’t noticed he was looking at her. Then she jerked her gaze away and returned it to the skeleton.

“I know. We’ll only need two more after this. So you need to take it to the king.”

The skeleton huffed a breath and looked away. First, back to the Charlie, then to the ground next to him. He brought his arms close to his body, a thick crease in the center of his browbone.

HOW LONG? he signed, the motions small and barely readable to Charlie, and even less to the bird monster, who had to lean to the side to even make them out.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

The skeleton curled his hands into fists, then forced them loose again.

HOW LONG UNTIL FREE?

She paused again, as if she still couldn’t figure out what he meant. She looked at Charlie, a little longer this time, actually seeming to take him in. For a second, he thought she might let him go. She looked nice. There were a lot of nice monsters, he was sure of it, they had taken him in, they had helped him, be nice to them and they’ll be nice to you, they …

She looked away.

“I don’t know,” she replied, before her face hardened. “But you keeping this human here isn’t going to make it come any faster. Just … let it out of those straps, I’ll take it—”

CAN LEARN.

It was so fast Charlie almost didn’t catch it. This time, neither did the bird monster, and the skeleton had to repeat it before she apparently understood. Or, at least, she understood his words. But she still looked just as confused.

“What do you mean, you can _learn_?”

He stared at her, frustrated, like a silent plea for her to get it. She didn’t. He glanced toward Charlie, not quite long enough to meet his eyes. The bird monster frowned harder.

“From the human?” The skeleton nodded. The bird monster took another look at Charlie, at the straps holding him down, at the machines he was hooked up to, at all the scalpels and nameless tools on the table next to him. “From doing _this_ to it?”

The skeleton grit his teeth and lowered his head. He didn’t quite look ashamed, but he didn’t look proud either. The bird monster sighed, and some of the tension in her slipped away.

“Gaster, I don’t like humans any more than you do. But what do you think you’re going to accomplish by … _torturing_ it like this?”

The skeleton stared at the ground. For a minute, neither of them said anything. Charlie shifted under the straps, but didn’t try to pull free. They wouldn’t budge. They never did. He watched the skeleton’s teeth grit, his eyes flash to Charlie before turning back to the bird monster, his hands raised and his face set.

EVIL.

“What?” she breathed.

The skeleton pointed his finger within inches of Charlie’s face.

HUMAN EVIL.

The bird monster followed his finger. She looked into Charlie’s eyes. Charlie looked back. She stiffened, and this time, he was sure she saw him. Actually saw him. He could see himself reflected in her eyes, in every inch of her expression.

A kid. Strapped to a table, clinging to consciousness in the vain hope that it would do any good.

Then she looked away again, and let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Perhaps. I don’t know,” she murmured. Charlie couldn’t help the faint twinge in his chest, but it was brief. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he had really believed she would do anything. She looked back to the skeleton with soft, imploring eyes. “Regardless, _you_ are not evil. But torturing a creature who cannot fight back _is_ evil.”

The skeleton shook his head, slowly at first, then harder.

HUMANS BETRAY. HUMANS HURT. HUMANS KILL. He paused, hands hanging in the air, before his teeth clenched and he finished. DESERVE IT.

His arms were shaking as they fell to his sides. The bird monster looked at him, her face shifting between sympathetic and hard.

“And you think you’re punishing all humans for their crimes by hurting this one?”

The skeleton flinched, but didn’t say anything. The bird monster’s face softened. She took another step toward him, her hands—or wings, or … he didn’t know what to call them—lifting as if to touch him, though he pulled back before she could. She sighed and shook her head.

“I know I can never imagine what you went through during the war. I know I can never imagine what you … _who_ you lost,” she said. Her voice was pained, and even through his hazy, aching head Charlie found himself wondering exactly how much those history books he had read had left out. “But we are not hunting down humans to seek our revenge.”

Charlie couldn’t decide whether the skeleton looked angry or hurt. Maybe it was both. He was tired. God, he was so tired. He just wanted to sleep. But he couldn’t let his eyes fall shut.

The skeleton brought his arms close to his torso again, and the loose sweater under his lab coat made him look like a kid dressing up in grown-ups’ clothes.

KING KILL ALL HUMANS, he signed, the motions so small Charlie could barely make them out.

The bird monster sighed.

“… At least killing is more merciful than this,” she murmured, as much to herself as to him. She glanced at Charlie for less than a second before holding her head up a little higher and turning to the skeleton again, face set. “I’m letting it go. I’ll take it to Asgore myself.”

She turned toward Charlie without waiting for a response, but she had only taken one step toward him before the skeleton held out his hands, waving, as if to stop her.

CAN LEARN! CAN BE FREE FASTER!

“ _How_?” she spat, spinning back around to face him, and Charlie didn’t need to see her clearly to imagine the burning look in her eyes. “Tell me how any of this is going to get us out of this place faster? How long have you been doing this? How much have you learned?”

The skeleton stared at her for a few seconds, frozen, before turning around and rummaging through his messy desk. He pulled out a stack of papers, holding them out to her. She hesitated, then took them in her own hands—or what might have been hands underneath all those feathers. She skimmed the first page, as if she wasn’t really reading it, but as she moved onto the second, her gaze slowed, as if she had to read each line twice to understand it.

Her hands tightened around the papers, so much that they almost crumpled in her hold. Was she shaking? Charlie couldn’t tell. She looked up, very slowly, and suddenly she looked much older than she had before.

“You’ve done all of this,” she breathed, so quietly Charlie almost couldn’t hear.

The skeleton had looked tall, almost proud, a few seconds ago, but now his posture slumped, and he curled his arms a little closer to his body. His gaze fell.

The bird monster looked one more time at the papers, then threw them to the floor hard enough for Charlie to hear them scatter.

“Gaster, what is _wrong_ with you?”

The skeleton flinched and tilted his head away, but said nothing. The bird monster squeezed the papers in her hands and pressed her bill shut tight.

“You aren’t … you’re one of the kindest monsters I know, how can you be this _cruel_?” she breathed, and he could hear the sob in the back of her throat.

The skeleton hesitated. He glanced up at her, then back down again, before he lifted his hands without meeting her eyes.

THEY WIN.

The woman blinked. “What?”

WE DOWN HERE, the skeleton went on, looking up as the line of his own mouth trembled. THEY WIN. SKELETONS DIE FOR NOTHING.

Her shoulders fell. She blinked, then blinked again. She looked at him, her eyes soft and pained for a few seconds before they hardened again.

“Hurting one human is not going to bring them back, Gaster,” she said, gentle and firm all at once. She let out a long breath and looked away. “They’re gone.”

The skeleton hugged himself. He looked old. Very, very old.

The woman took a step forward, toward him, one of wings twitching as if she wanted to reach out to touch him.

“But you’re alive. _You_ still have a chance to live a good life.”

The skeleton only tensed further. The bird monster sighed and looked at Charlie, staring into his eyes just long enough for him to see the deep purple of her own before she held out an arm to gesture toward him and turned her head away.

“And this? Is not how you do it.”

The skeleton fidgeted. The woman huffed.

“You’re not just the Royal Scientist, Gaster. You’re a _person,_ ” she went on, a bit softer. Her hand twitched again. “You’re my friend.”

Silence. She glanced at Charlie again and winced.

“And it kills me to watch you … destroy yourself with this because you think that you can change what’s already happened.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds. The skeleton monster’s face twisted in something like pain before he dropped his head again, shaking it.

I FAIL.

The woman made a sound like snorting, even though she didn’t have a nose.

“If you’ve failed, then so have I,” she shot back. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you really think you can learn anything from this human? Anything _useful_?”

The skeleton looked like he wanted to respond, but he didn’t say anything. Charlie couldn’t tell whether he honestly couldn’t think of anything, or if he just couldn’t think of anything the woman would want to hear.

The woman looked at Charlie one more time, then sighed.

“I will deliver this human to Asgore. And after its soul has been removed … I’ll ask him if he would be willing to let you study the souls. Those are what is important. Those are what will get us out of here. _Not_ a living human.”

The skeleton stiffened further and fidgeted as the woman approached the table, but he didn’t stop her. But as she stopped, standing only a couple of feet from where Charlie lay, the skeleton waved his hands to get her attention.

YOU WANT SEE SURFACE? he signed.

It was easy to see the tiny shifts in the bird monster’s expression from this angle, even if Charlie had never gotten to know anyone with so many features, or a bill instead of a mouth. She wasn’t as old as the skeleton, but she still looked old. Thoughtful. Contemplated. Resigned.

“… yes,” she replied at last. “But I’m not unhappy here. And if I spend the rest of my life down here, I would not consider it wasted.”

The skeleton looked like he was about to say something. His mouth was already open, even though Charlie had a feeling that even if he did speak, the woman wouldn’t understand him. He paused, then closed it and lifted his hands, his eyes burning with something Charlie didn’t have a name for.

I GET US OUT.

The woman closed her eyes, lowering her head.

“I’ll let you know what the king decides.”

The skeleton stared for a second, silent, frozen, before he looked away as well.

The woman turned to Charlie at last, looking down on him, meeting his eyes and taking him in. She looked at him like she might look at an abused animal. An animal that would have been slaughtered anyway, but had been made to suffer far longer than was needed. An animal that still had to die nonetheless.

Charlie opened his mouth, croaking out the start of a syllable through his dry throat. The woman’s eyes went soft for just a second before she raised a hand and a ball of something that looked like water formed just above it.

Then he felt a sharp sting, and everything faded into darkness.

* 

Dr. Billington had left more than an hour ago, carrying the unconscious human in her arms, but Gaster still hadn’t moved from the middle of the room.

Every few minutes, he would look at the table where he had strapped the human down, the plate full of instruments he had used to poke and prod and slice it open. The machines he had hooked it up to.

The pile of papers where he had taken notes he knew might never be of use.

Had he thought about what was important, before he started the experiments? Had he thought about what he _needed_ to know? Or had he just seen another human, another human who had ruined _everything_ for him, for _everyone,_ another human who had stuck them down here for two thousand years and taken away everything he had ever cared about, another human who had _betrayed_ him—

Except … this human hadn’t betrayed him.

But it was still a human. It was still part of that same lying, murderous species. It deserved whatever it got. It …

Gaster gritted his teeth and put a hand to his head.

What was he doing?

Was this what he had turned into? Was this what he wanted to be? Had he even _learned_ anything from all of this? He had to. They didn’t have this information before, there was no information about the biology of humans, this _had_ to be useful somehow. He didn’t know how, but … he would find it. He would figure out a way to put it to use, he would find a way to get them out of here, without having to wait for another two souls to fall.

Five humans had already fallen. Five. The first four had been taken to the king before he could see them, and he had never thought of doing experiments on them, but this one … this one had _walked right up to him,_ just walked around like it belonged here, like it had been here for a while, it was carrying _groceries,_ for god’s sake, and no one had stopped it.

He hadn’t been thinking when he smacked a bone into its head.

He hadn’t been thinking when he picked it up and dragged it back to his lab.

But he had been thinking when he cut into its flesh.

He had been thinking of his brother’s dust, strewn across the grass. Strewn across Eb—across a human’s body. He had been thinking of those few seconds that he stood frozen, waiting, _stupid,_ as she pounded his brother into the ground, the brother he had barely spoken ten words to in months but his _brother_ nonetheless _,_ when she had promised to never be like them, she had _promised_ to never hurt a monster.

She promised.

And she lied.

She lied. He had ignored his own people for her, he had ignored their warnings, he had spent every waking moment with _her_ even when they told him she was only going to betray him _,_ and she had … she had lied.

She had lied to him for eleven years.

And he wasn’t going to be fooled again.

It didn’t matter what anyone else said about humans, about this human, about _any_ human. They were all the same. Dr. Billington was experienced, intelligent, but she hadn’t _been_ there. She hadn’t _seen_ them. She hadn’t seen what they _did._ She didn’t know what they _deserved._

She didn’t know anything. No one did. No one had known a human like he did.

And when they got out of here … when he got them out of here, he _would_ get them out of here … he would make sure that no human ever hurt a monster again.

One way or another.

* 

“He was doing _what_?”

“I … I think so.”

“For … for how long?”

“I’m not sure. At least a few days, going by what I saw. Probably a good deal longer.”

The man’s voice sighed, and Charlie swore he could hear him running a hand over his face.

“My goodness … is this … Dr. Billington, I … I should have come by there more. I haven’t even been to the lab in at least a decade, does he really think that he’s responsible for handling …? How could I have given him that impression—”

“Your majesty,” the woman cut him off. “You can’t blame yourself for this. Gaster … he’s … he’s always had problems I can’t understand. I expect none of us can fully understand what he went through.”

There was a long pause before the man sighed again. “Yes …”

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. Charlie wanted to open his eyes, but they were heavy, heavy and tired. But they didn’t hurt. They didn’t hurt at all. Nothing hurt. Like all the pain had been sapped out of his body.

At last, the man sighed again.

“I’m going to visit him. I’ll tell him to take a few weeks off. He … clearly needs some time away from the lab, after all he’s been putting himself through.” Another pause. “And I … need to make it clear that this is not … needed. Or acceptable.”

Charlie wiggled his fingers and toes. They didn’t want to move. They felt like they had been turned into rocks, or his muscles had forgotten how to work. He gritted his teeth and tried harder.

Someone shifted a few feet to his left, in the direction of the man’s voice.

“I took on this duty so that no one else would have to. I made this promise to give my people hope, not … not to make them destroy themselves.”

Another sigh. This one sounded old. At least as old as the skeleton, but probably older. A lot older. It sounded like the voice of someone who had seen worlds be born, live and die, knowing there was nothing he could do to change things.

“I should be the only one to shoulder this burden.”

This time, the woman sighed. It was a different kind of sigh. She had never sounded as old as the skeleton or this new man, but the sigh sounded like she had seen this sort of thing far too many times before. Enough times to accept that she wasn’t going to be able to fix it.

“You’re a person, too, Asgore,” she said nonetheless. “Destroying yourself isn’t going to help anyone.”

Silence again. Charlie wished he could see what the man’s face looked like. Even with his eyes closed, it felt sad.

“I’ll do what I need to to get everyone out of here.”

A second passed. Then the woman sighed, a little heavier than before.

“It’s amazing that the two of you haven’t spent more time together,” she said, and she sounded like she was talking to herself just as much as him. “In some ways, you’re very much alike.”

The man didn’t reply.

The lighter set of feet—the woman?—started walking away. The floor sounded hard, the room big, the echo resounding all around them.

“Make sure he goes home for the day, would you?” the man asked. The footsteps paused. “I’ll … be by to see him tomorrow.”

Charlie could hear the woman breathing from further away.

“Of course.”

Another few seconds of silence passed. Then her footsteps started up again, softer and softer until they disappeared entirely.

The man was still here. Still breathing, standing above where Charlie lay. Charlie wanted to see him. He needed to see him. He needed to see what was going on, what was … His eyes were heavy, but he forced them open, struggling to lift his lids and blink away the blurring colors in front of his eyes, focusing on the shape looming above him.

It was … Toriel.

Except … no, it wasn’t her. It looked like her, he had the same white fur, the same purple robe, the same white emblem painted in the middle, but … Toriel’s horns weren’t that big. And she didn’t have that thick yellow hair, or a beard.

And he had never seen her with a trident, holding it so hard her hands were shaking.

“I’m so sorry,” the monster breathed, and Charlie could hear the tears in his throat, the ache older than Charlie could have imagined. His eyes were shining. Charlie’s vision blurred before he could figure out whether or not they were tears.

The trident raised above the monster’s head, his eyes squeezed shut as Charlie let his own fall closed.

He only felt the briefest of stings before the darkness fell.

* 

Mom. Dad.

Jessica. Penelope. Lettie.

They were all out there. Back on the surface. Back in the little town where he had grown up.

He would never see them again. He would never get to say he was sorry for wandering off on his own on the family hike. He would never get to see Jessica become a famous artist, like he always knew she would. Or sit with Penelope when she woke up after a seizure and talk to her about the stars, the stars she had adored since the first time they drove out into the country and saw the Milky Way spread out across the sky. Or show Lettie how to play Patty Cake and Cat’s Cradle and all the little games she thought were so cool.

He could never see his family.

Never get his life back.

If he had done something different … if he had moved faster through the Underground, or stayed away from Waterfall, or done _something_ else to gain everyone’s trust … maybe it could have worked. Maybe he could have gotten out. Maybe he could have seen his family again. Maybe he could have saved everyone.

Maybe … if he could just try again, if he could just change one thing, if he could just try _one more time_ …

Maybe he …

He …

* 

Charlie opened his eyes to a bright light shining far above his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for the fallen children! Next week, on Wednesday the 23rd, we move on to _How to Make Spaghetti_. Otherwise known as Papyrus and Undyne's story. ;)


End file.
